As the value and use of information continues to increase, individuals and businesses seek additional ways to process and store information. One option available to users is information handling systems. An information handling system generally processes, compiles, stores, and/or communicates information or data for business, personal, or other purposes thereby allowing users to take advantage of the value of the information. Because technology and information handling needs and requirements vary between different users or applications, information handling systems may also vary regarding what information is handled, how the information is handled, how much information is processed, stored, or communicated, and how quickly and efficiently the information may be processed, stored, or communicated. The variations in information handling systems allow for information handling systems to be general or configured for a specific user or specific use such as financial transaction processing, airline reservations, enterprise data storage, or global communications. In addition, information handling systems may include a variety of hardware and software components that may be configured to process, store, and communicate information and may include one or more computer systems, data storage systems, and networking systems.
Information handling systems often use an array of storage resources, such as a Redundant Array of Independent Disks (RAID), for example, for storing information. Arrays of storage resources typically utilize multiple disks to perform input and output operations and can be structured to provide redundancy which may increase fault tolerance. Other advantages of arrays of storage resources may be increased data integrity, throughput and/or capacity. In operation, one or more storage resources disposed in an array of storage resources may appear to an operating system as a single logical storage unit or “logical unit.”Implementations of storage resource arrays can range from a few storage resources disposed in a server chassis, to hundreds of storage resources disposed in one or more separate storage enclosures.
For many years, physical storage resources were typically implemented using magnetic storage media. However, in recent years, the industry has shifted to using solid-state storage devices in place of magnetic storage media. Solid-state storage devices may be desirable over magnetic storage media due to reduced latency, higher performance, fewer mechanical components, and other reasons. Increasingly, storage arrays (including RAIDs) have been implemented using solid-state storage devices. However, the use of traditional solid-state storage devices in RAIDs may have disadvantages. To illustrate, a solid-state storage device may include additional capacity for parity-based redundancy within the solid-state storage device itself. Thus, in the event of the failure within the solid-state storage device (e.g., a die failure), the solid-state storage device may rebuild data based on the parity information. In a RAID configuration of a plurality of solid-state storage devices, this device-level parity essentially provides a second layer of protection to the RAID itself. However, from a practical standpoint the additional protection provided is fairly insignificant, meaning the device-level parity overhead occupies capacity that could otherwise be used for data storage, while providing little or no significant benefit.